How do you sell land on the internet?

We usually put the less expensive properties into 3- or 5-day auctions and the more expensive ones into 7-day ones. There is a flurry of bidding when they first go up, a lull for a while, then, if the bidders remember to come back, a frantic bidding right at the deadline for the sale to end.

Of the 2,000 or more properties that have sold, we have NEVER LOST MONEY on a single one, although some did not provide us as much profit as we’d like. This seems strange because the bidding starts at ONE DOLLAR! And the sale is an absolute auction—we guarantee that the property will be sold to the person who has the highest bid, regardless of the price.

Now, please don’t be having images of houses being sold for hundreds of dollars here. These are vacant lots, vacant parcels, and vacant tracts of land purchased mainly in the western states at tax sales. “There are a lot of people who can afford the low-priced properties. They can put them on their credit cards. There are not many people who can plunk down $30,000 for a property.”

Actually if the demand for the higher-priced parcels is pretty strong, we often do not sell them on the Internet auctions, but market them through local real estate brokers. This typically means we are going to get close to market value, which might not happen on the online auctions, although it may take longer to sell with the professionals. Because the online sale can be completed within a couple of weeks, one can take the purchase money and buy more properties to resell soon for a new profit.

When working hard at selling, Joyce Beck may have five or six properties offered for sale at the same time. She makes sure that they are in different locations, or if two are in the same subdivision or county that they are very different, so that they are not competing with each other for the buyers. For instance she may have a one-acre parcel for sale at the same time that a 40-acre parcel is offered. Properties this different will typically attract different potential buyers.

BUYERS FROM ALL OVER. We sell to people all over the country and even overseas: Australia, New Zealand, Okinawa, the British Virgin Islands, and ten countries in Western Europe. “Some weeks they sell like gangbusters and some weeks are weak. We don’t know why. We can’t see anything that causes it. ” About one fifth of our buyers are other investors who buy from us and then turn around and resell the properties for more to other buyers. This can happen because we only sell “all cash” and the other professionals may resell offering to finance the purchase for the buyers after some down payment, sometimes determined by their bid amount.

About 80% of the buyers pay with Pay Pal, the money coming from either a credit card or, with “electronic checks,” their checking account which are linked to PayPal. Paypal is a very convenient way to accept payments from your auction winners. Most of the remaining buyers pay with a check. Naturally, don’t send the deed until we are sure that the check will clear.

On the auction property description explicitly ask people to take the bidding seriously and not bid if they will not complete the purchase. However still about 20% of sales do not get paid for. Encourage people to e-mail questions to you, check out the property with the county it is in, and get their doubts satisfied before they bid.

The deed preparation fee.

The deed preparation fee is a charge, revealed in the ad, which is added to the purchase price for the preparation of the deed and other paperwork associated with the sale.

The actual costs for this phase are rarely as much as the fee, so it adds another profit-center to the auction. We feel that it is important that we—well, Joyce actually—send the deed for recording to the appropriate county recorders office. When the person buys a parcel Joyce sends them a packet of information with a cover letter thanking them for their purchase, a copy of the original deed which we are sending to the recorder, and a copy of the assessor’s parcel map. We used to send deeds to the buyers, with instructions of how to record them. However, far too many people never recorded their deeds. Then the tax bill would not be sent to them, but would continue to come to us. As we did not own the property anymore, this caused problems. We did not pay the taxes and the new owners did not pay. It ended up looking like we were delinquent property tax payers.